


The Box

by Dark_And_Twisted_Thing



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Christmas, Christmas Fluff, Domestic Fluff, Everything is Beautiful and Nothing Hurts, F/F, Ficlet, Gift Giving, Murder Wives, No Angst, Post-Episode: s03e13 The Wrath of the Lamb, mystery present, the murder wives are adorable at Christmas
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-26
Updated: 2019-12-26
Packaged: 2021-02-25 21:54:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,351
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21972427
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dark_And_Twisted_Thing/pseuds/Dark_And_Twisted_Thing
Summary: A tooth rottingly fluffy bit of short and sweet Christmas fic in which the Murder Wives receive a mystery gift, drink expensive whiskey, and everyone is filled with the Christmas spirit.Merry Christmas everyone! x
Relationships: Alana Bloom/Margot Verger, Will Graham/Hannibal Lecter
Comments: 6
Kudos: 54





	The Box

**Author's Note:**

  * For [blesser](https://archiveofourown.org/users/blesser/gifts).



The box had arrived two days ago, unexpectedly lugged into their kitchen by a peeved looking delivery driver who grumbled under his breath about the weight of the parcel from the time he got it out of his van until the time he drove off. The giant box had sat on their kitchen island for several hours while they debated what on earth they should do with it.

“I say, we open it,” Margot had stated brazenly, never one to cower, especially in her own home.

The much more sensible (she liked to think) and cautious Alana had quite reasonably pointed out that as no one was supposed to know where they were, no one should be sending them unmarked packages.

“It’s not ticking,” Margot observed, somewhat facetiously making a show of putting her ear to the box.

Alana looked at her sternly.

“What? What do you think might happen?” Margot said, playfully flicking the box with one perfectly manicured finger.

“It could be an explosive and we may both die.”

Margot laughed.

“So, Mrs Professor in Psychology, in your professional opinion, you believe that Hannibal has located us somehow, and rather than choose to break in and make some sort of soufflé with our bone marrow, he just mailed us a bomb. Via Amazon.”

Alana sighed. She had to admit, this scenario seemed extremely unlikely. It would not fit with Hannibal’s profile, and whatever worries she still had about Will’s psychological make-up, she was certain a bomb would not be his style either. Still, the rational, logical side of her brain was currently fighting with the sinisterly unreasonable voice which whispered to her that almost everything might conceivably be threat to the newfound happiness she had built with Margot.

Margot put her arm around her wife and squeezed.

“Alana, it’s Christmas. Maybe someone you volunteer with looked up your address and sent something. Or maybe Jack sent something… Which is unlikely. But still. There’s no reason to believe it is something sinister. Don’t let fear win.”

Taking a steady breath in and letting it out slowly, Alana walked across the kitchen and plucked a knife from the block on the counter. She sliced the tape sealing the top of the box and pulled it open tentatively. Margot peeked over the edge to be greeted with nothing but a sea of while packing peanuts.

“Well, if it is a bomb, it’s very well packaged,” she observed cyclically.

Alana grimaced. “I am holding a knife you know.”

The faintest ghost of a smile tugging on the corners of her mouth, Margot dug her hands through the peanuts and came into contact with something smooth and metallic.

“Huh.”

“What?” Alana asked, alarmed.

“It’s massive. Can’t see for all of the damn packing peanuts though.”

Margot cupped a bunch of the peanuts in her hands and tossed them out of the box.

“Margot!”

“What? It’s Christmas. Pretend it’s snow.”

Alana pinched the bridge of her nose and said nothing as her wife proceeded to cover their kitchen floor with Styrofoam.

“Oooo – I see it.”

“What?”

Alana threw caution to the wind and stuck her head over the box edge. She was greeted with a huge, red metallic object, seemingly covered in dials and cogwheels, and looking particularly demonic nestled against its backdrop of white foam.

“You know, this is doing nothing to quell my fears that this is some sort of explosive,” she said, tilting her head to one side to try and get a better view of the object.

Margot tutted and reached into the box to pick out a small booklet which had burrowed into one corner.

“Ah ha! This should help.”

She opened the booklet and a smile flashed across her face.

“Welcome to your Rocket Mozzafianto Cronometro Type V,” she read aloud.

Alana’s confusion increased exponentially. “What the hell is that?”

Margot flipped the booklet around to show Alana a full image of what was nestled inside the box.

“It’s a coffee machine.”

***

The next hour and a half was spent attempting to extricate the machine from the box. To an outside observer, watching two exquisitely dressed and remarkably intelligent women struggle and bicker about how best to get a coffee machine weighing approximately 50 pounds out of a cardboard box might have been fairly comedic. To Alana and Margot however, the experience was quite unpleasant, and they eventually settled on simply shredding the entirety of the box around the machine and peeling out of its package like it was a banana. The bright red machine then sat on their kitchen island, surrounded by its destroyed packaging and looking rather like a menacing machine of war which was the last thing standing on a battlefield. 

Margot had managed to open a bottle of whiskey at some point during the experience, and the ladies now stood holding half full gold rimmed glasses of Macallan Rare Cask Black while glaring viciously at the coffee machine.

“Now what?” Margot asked, taking a sip of whiskey and closing her eyes in bliss.

Alana, who was always less of a whiskey fan than her wife, pulled a slight face as she sipped her drink and contemplated where on earth this alien thing could have come from.

“There was definitely not a note,” she said, more to herself than to Margot.

“No, no note. No return address. No invoice. No sender information. Just an empty box full of packing peanuts and an overweight death machine for making coffee.”

Alana tipped her remaining whiskey into Margot’s glass and went to the cupboard for a bottle of wine.

“It’s a good thing there’s an instruction manual I suppose.”

Margot flipped through the manual and frowned.

“It’s 86 pages long.”

Alana popped open a bottle of wine and poured herself a very large glass. She drank half of it in an extremely undignified long draught.

“It’s him. It has to be,” she said eventually.

Margot shook her head.

“How would he have found us? And if he had, why a coffee machine? With no note?”

Alana sighed.

“It would be unusual not to include a note if it was Hannibal. The lack of a note would suggest Will. He would be more likely to send something simply for the pleasure of knowing it had given someone else enjoyment. But the nature of the gift suggests Hannibal. Will would have been drawn to send something handmade, rustic, more personal. For him, this is overstated, too flashy. And too expensive.”

The women looked at each other over the top of the machine. Margot raised one eyebrow at her wife.

“No. Margot. We don’t know that,” Alana said finally, understanding her wife’s look perfectly.

“ _Alana_.”

Alana shook her head and took another large drink.

“No. It is possible it isn’t from either of them. It could be from someone else entirely. There is no proof it’s from either one of them, let alone that it’s from them both.”

Margot shook her head and decided to let Alana live in denial for a few more moments. They both knew it would not be possible for her to remain in denial for long – Alana’s nature was too analytical and fact-based to allow for the blind rejection of evidence, and she would have to accept her own logical deduction at some point. The gift had been sent to them from Hannibal and Will together: Hannibal’s taste and knowledge of the taste of others and Will’s desire to please people without the need of acknowledgment were both evident in the gift, and one could not have existed reasonably without the other.

After a few minutes, Alana spoke.

“Why a gift? Why now? It’s been almost a year.”

Almost a year since Alana and Margot had fled, taking their child and running for their lives from the escaped lunatic who had threatened to kill them. Almost a year since Will had vanished too, the remains of the Dragon, a shattered wine glass, and a set of fingerprints on a bottle being the only clues to what had happened in that lonely beach house on the cliff. 

Margot thought of her boy, asleep upstairs, his features so resembling Mason’s – an influence he would always be free of in every other way. She was a fiercely protective mother, determined to give her child everything she had not had – love, affection, and the protection from fear that she had so longed for when she was his age. Yet, as she stood contemplating the bizarre gift which sat in their kitchen like a tombstone, she felt no fear.

“I think,” she said slowly, “that it’s a peace offering.”

Alana narrowed her eyes.

“Why?” she asked.

Margot put down her glass and spread her arms wide.

“Why not? You said it yourself. Will would have sent something just because he knows you would like it. Or that both of us would. That hardly seems like a threat. But it’s Hannibal’s influence in the choice of gift. And no note. If it was designed to intimidate, wouldn’t he have said something? Included something that would have told us it was from him and that he was coming? Or just broken in and murdered us all as I suggested earlier?” She gesticulated at the machine. “This - this is just a Christmas present. From both of them. You know what that means, Alana.”

Alana turned her back on the present and leaned heavily on the kitchen counter. She didn’t want to believe it. But if she was honest with herself, after what had been found at that beach house, she always knew that they were either both dead or both alive together. There would have been no middle ground for either of them – death or love were their only two un-played hands. In a way, the thought of Will and Hannibal together comforted her as well as horrified her. Will was not a killer and he never could be, not like Hannibal. He was too empathetic to be an effective monster, and his intimate knowledge of the pain he could potentially inflict would instinctually stay the hand that held the knife. But the gift showed Will had made a choice, and Alana decided she would try to trust that choice as far as she could.

“We need to remain cautious,” she said finally, turning back around to face Margot.

“I know,” Margot replied, “But if either of them was alive, we always knew this day would come in some form or another. I personally prefer the most obtrusive coffee machine in the world to a knife through the heart.” She swallowed the last dregs of the whiskey in her glass and poured herself another. “I’m not running any more, Alana. I’ve spent my whole life running. If we have both got this wrong and they come for us, we will stand and fight. And we will win.”

Alana looked at her wife, tossing back whiskey with a fierce glint in her eye and was filled with adoration for this woman she had chosen to love. She had been wrong before, and she knew it was possible she was wrong about the meaning behind this gift – but Margot was right, the time for running was over. It was time to stand together and fight for what was theirs. If they fell, they would fall together.

Margot crossed the kitchen and kissed her wife, the kiss tasting of expensive whiskey and the Christmas peppermints they had eaten earlier. They then stood arm in arm, both separately wondering what on earth to do with this damn coffee machine. The machine glinted at them, red as blood, a solidly unmoving reminder of what they had survived.

**_Postscript_ **

“Is there something wrong with that machine?”

Alana eyed the coffee machine with suspicion as it emitted another cloud of steam and hissed loudly.

Margot emerged from behind the cloud and gently batted away the steam as though it was a mosquito.

“There’s nothing wrong with it. It sounds fine to me.”

Alana looked unconvinced. Standing in her kitchen wearing nothing but a bath towel and clutching a mug, she felt vulnerable and undefended. Margot had roused her from the safety of her morning shower announce in what passed for an excitable tone than she had managed to get the coffee machine working. Stumbling into the kitchen still wet and feeling a little press-ganged, Alana’s annoyance dissipated somewhat when a mug was pressed into her hands and she saw the faint spark of delight in her wife’s eyes. Still, she couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something vaguely disquieting about the gleaming red machine.

“I don’t trust it.”

Margot rolled her eyes.

“It’s a coffee machine, Alana. There is nothing to trust or distrust.”

The machine hissed again and emitted another cloud of steam.

“Mmmm. Why does it keep doing that? I don’t seem to remember other coffee machines hissing constantly.”

Margot crossed her arms and fixed her wife with a look.

“Would you like an Irish coffee or not?”

“ _Irish_ coffee? Margot, it’s 8 A.M.”

“Yes. On Christmas Day. And I for one will certainly need to be at least slightly drunk to deal with trying to cook that massive turkey.”

Alana smiled. “Oh, alright. But we are brushing our teeth afterwards.”

Margot tamped down the coffee and fitted the filter handle back into the machine. The machine made an almost ungodly noise and began to deposit a stream of thick black coffee into the mug Margot had tucked underneath its spout.

In spite of her doubts, Alana had to admit that the smell of fresh coffee was divine, even in the machine itself looked like the devil incarnate. She watched Margot’s deft fingers with their festive red and green polished nails work to make two perfect Irish coffees and thought happily of the day ahead. Their little boy’s joyful laughter as he tore open his presents, Margot trying to snatch kisses while she mixed the stuffing, getting slightly tipsy in front of the fire later… Christmas as it should be, happy, warm, and for once, perhaps even safe.

**Author's Note:**

> A gift for my own special murder wife this Christmas, and my very first attempt at writing for Margot and Alana. This one is real short, but I loved writing them!


End file.
